Dream a Little Dream of Me

Ronda. Oh Ronda. The city of Dreams, the city of incredible beauty. It's an ancient city with a gorgeous landscape and beautiful antique bridges, that almost had a LOTR feel aha. NerdAlert. It was breathtaking, I felt almost as though I had never seen true beauty before going there, how cheesy I know. But it's true, it's one of the most beautiful places I have seen thus far in my life, although there are some pretty spectacular places in Italy as well.

We got there by bus in the early morning - EARLY morning, it was still dark out when our bus departed. But once we got there we all met up at the Plaza del Torros - the oldest Plaza de Toros in Spain and then were given complete freedom for the rest of the day which was Awesome. Ronda is one of those places that photos will never do justice. 

We climbed down the cliff to the bottom of the Puente Nuevo -New Bridge (actually quite an old bridge that was built in 1751.) There's two other main bridges in the city but Puente Nuevo is spectacular because it's built in between two cliffs in Ronda and has waterfalls flowing at the bottom, so ridiculously beautiful. The cliffs, the bridges, the Andalusian landscape all mixed together just made for one amazing place. I definitely want to go back.

Ronda Countryside

One of the amazing views of the Ronda cliffs

Puente Nuevo 

One our way back to the meeting place, my friend M and I stopped at a merchant booth, there was some really kool wood carvings and things like that, we ended up talking to the booth owner (all in Spanish of course) for quite a while, he was a really nice old guy -probably in his 60's/70's, and we had a really great conversation about Canada and the USA, cultural things, environmental things, the natural beauty of Spain, Canada, and the USA, the First Nations (is that the PC term these days?) cultures and all kinds of interesting things. Was definitely a great way to end the day, he was the sweetest old man. 

After returning from Ronda, I ended up going to this club called Planta Baja with 2 amigos, there was a free DJ concert there last night, it was suppose to be some pretty sweet music, the DJ playing FOR FREE that night was noDJ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeOY_ddu06M&feature=relmfu&fb_source=message

Unfortunately like everything in Spain the show didn't start until like 3am and by then one of my friends and I were pretty dead so we ended up leaving but Planta Baja is a pretty sweet bar/club, it has a bit of an older crowd which is kind of nice, more people in their mid-twenties to early-thirties. The music we were jamming to on the dance floor before the DJ was pretty awesome too. 

Anyways, that was my Saturday. Thursday night I went out to the club Campus which is always interesting, may have drank quite a lot, so I spent friday mostly recovering aha plus it was a Spanish holiday -again- but this time it was a National-wide holiday, it was Spain Day or Spaniard Day or something like that which just celebrated Spain all over the country.

Oct 13

Some pieces of the soul

A few random poems inspired by my España

winding roads
whispering winds
wandering through my mind
quick tongues
quicker flamenco fingers
plucking the strings of my heart
the ancient cracks
curled in iron
imprinted beauty in my eyes
doorways laced in flowered garments
flourishing shards of azul
piecing my mosaic back together
---
I wish I could tell you
how the night shines
under the pale moonlight
of this ancient love
but words could never express
what the eyes drink in
this beauty, only truth
steals my breath
like the nights we never held
remind me, my love
of the wonder, of the lust
lost in the effervescent lights
of the ageless city below

---

I am falling in love 

with the city of love

where all the lovers come

to fall in love 

oh to be in love

I am so in love with the love 

that this city gives 

if only I too could be in love

with a lover

in this city of great love 

how lovely the nights would be

to share love under the loving stars

and be at one with love 

---

church bells resonating

birds softly singing as they float in the sky

wind rustling through the ancient gardens of time

the sweetest melodies of spanish guitar filling my soul

basking in the midday sun

perfection.

---

every day I wake

feeling as though I still dream

for the beauty is inexplicable 

how could it be 

that this is my life
---
me la siento
con mi alma
la veo
con mi corazón
siempre
la tengo
en mis ojos
la perfección del amor
de mi ciudad, de mi casa

de mi vida en este momento
---
(older poem)
my thoughts
drift and dribble
in and out
connecting, forgetting
las almas de la noche
vienen por mí
robando mi corazón
somewhere in
between the lines
the words
the letters
caught in the white empty
spaces
de la noche
de la noche
estoy aquí
no recuerdo el tiempo o la lugar
but I cannot forget
you
tus ojos como el mar puro
those lips untouched
but soon to be
oh whisper
te quiero
te quiero
ahora
la noche corre
jealous of us
and our desires
en la oscuridad
tu piel en mi piel
la luna, el sol, las estrellas
no pueden vernos
esta noche

Classes, Curses, and Canadian Thanksgiving

A new week. Well it's now Wednesday but it's been quite an interesting week already. This is the first full week of classes since last week we had a holiday on Monday and whatever. This first kind of odd thing about these classes are that they want us to fill out little i.d. cards and put like a passpost size photo of ourselves on them, 1. that is pretty weird, why not just have an attendance sheet, and 2. it's a nuisance trying to find somewhere to either get passport sized photos taken or somewhere with a printer to print tiny bad-quality black-and-white photos of yourself. UBC has a good system with a class list with our student photos on them, then again we have actual i.d. cards there and not pieces of paper with a passport sized photo glue sticked to it. Anywho, I still need to actually get photos printed from somewhere, that's a friday task.

Classes have been pretty interesting so far, my teachers are all a little crazy which is always entertaining, they've got that sassy Spanish attitude, well some of the woman do, the male profs just like to joke around and all seem to have their own kind of quirks. Apparently one of the Art History profs just breaks out into random song sometimes and is actually a decent Opera singer, who would've guessed eh. My spanish grammar prof, who's name is África btw, is a small woman who is intimidating as hell and very sarcastic, love her and fear her at the same time. She's one of those profs who will just randomly call out your name and ask you a random question about whatever, she also calls me Canada which I find hilarious, although having such a nickname makes it easier for her to call on me..eek.

There's also a bit of a teachers strike going on at the CLM (and probably all of UGR). Because of the economy, the profs have gotten a pay cut but their hours have been extended, as a result, at least at the CLM, on both Monday and Wednesday during my spanish conversational class my prof (who's an adorable petite woman with puffy, curly hair and glasses) left for 15minutes to stand in the courtyard with all the other profs and protest with signs. It's a pretty odd thing to watch, I feel bad for them, the economy here has gone to shit this past year, Granada is holding up alright in general but the country has definitely been suffering as a whole. Apparently there's student strike going at the main UGR campus so they may not have classes tomorrow, I don't know, everything around here has a sense of underlying political problems. It's a crazy system.

My Italian teacher is also a bit of a crazy lady, she's from Milan, has long blonde hair and exaggerated expressions, she's Great. So far she's mostly taught us expressions, swear words, and well some actual technical things like past tenses but yeah, it's definitely been an interesting class so far. In that class there's two girls from Granada which is kind of awesome, finally a class that isn't all Americans! Aha, this is the Hilarious video we watched last class that 'explains' italian hand gestures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVCuyrPk7P4

Anyhow, this past weekend was of course, Canadian Thanksgiving but since most of us were out of the city at some point this weekend we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Monday instead. We being me, 3 other UBC-ers, another girl in the CLM program from Toronto, and my roomie. Of course being in Spain, it was a little challenging to have a 'traditional' Thanksgiving dinner so we just made the best of what we could find, it was like Thanksgiving Spanish-Style aha. It turned out pretty awesome though! We had chicken with carrots and green beans, asparagus, fresh bread, and of course, 3 bottles of red wine. With some chocolatey ice cream cake thing for dessert. Aha, weird meal but an excellent Canadian Thanksgiving Spanish-Style dinner I would say.

Dinner is Served...minus the plate of asparagus

Great company, Great food, Great night!

Oct. 8-12

Finding Candycane Land

So after two and half awesome days of touring around Sevilla, I decided to be crazy tourist and went on a day trip to Córdoba on Sunday. It was awesome day trip, bus took about 3 hours and we got to see a lot of the Andalusian country side which was surprisingly hilly. The trip was a lot different from the Sevilla trip since it was an organized one and we had a tour guide and a schedule, it was kinda nice too though because we got either group discount or free entrance into all the main sites.

Like Granada, Córdoba was a big mix of cultures, there was a lot of churches of course but there was also a whole Jewish area of town which was kool, we visited the Synagog there and wandered through it a bit. We went into the Alcazar there which was a lot smaller than the one in Sevilla but it was still beautiful and had a great view of the city from the upper walls/tower, they're very castle-like on the exterior. 

Then of course there was the main attraction, the Mezquita, a grand old church that is a crazy mix of everything, it had Gothic architecture in some parts and Romanesque architecture in others, there Arabic and Jewish influence in other parts, and then there was the main Christian altars were they held Mass and whatnot. Definitely a church that had been continuously built on and added to since it's first construction. It was beautiful and pretty much looked like an ancient version of Candyland aha if you don't know what the Mezquita looks like, it's famous for it's red and white arches which are the main architecture throughout most of the church. It's a very visually interesting interior for a church, very unique for sure. 

The Alcazar

The Mezquita 

It was a sweet trip and I met some kool people from Italy, Poland, and Finland which is always a plus. Love traveling and meeting internationals! The kind of bad and hilarious part of the trip was that during my Sevilla trip my sickness started to hit me and as a result I had almost lost my voice on Saturday and Sunday it wasn't much better, I sounded like a mixture of a 40 yr old chain smoker and a pre-pubescent boy. Yikes aha. Oh well, it was still a great time!

Oct. 7

Adventuring to Sevilla

Hello again! Now that school has started and whatnot, my blogging will probably be more sporadic but what can ya do. Just wanna say thank you to everyone who actually takes the time to read all this random stuff I'm been babbling about for the past 3 weeks. It's nice to know there's people out there who care enough to want to read random blog posts about my life.

Anywho, I had a bit of a crazy weekend this past week, I started classes on Monday and after the crazy schedule changes I now finish classes by 12:30pm on Thursday which is Awesome. And so, T, K, and I decided that to go to Sevilla for a couple days this weekend on our own little excursion since we all have 3 day weekends. Unfortunately for me, I was starting to feel a cold coming on and almost decided not to go to Sevilla but in the end I was like "por qué no?" (why not?) which has become my philosophy for while I'm here in Spain.

We caught the 9pm Renfe Train to Sevilla which was nice and chill, the trains here are really nice and efficient for traveling around, will def be using them more in the future. We got into Sevilla around midnight and then wandered (and got lost) for about 45mins until we finally found our Hostel Catedral. The first odd thing about Sevilla was that it was pretty quiet for a Thursday at midnight, around Granada that's like party time because there's no school on Friday and midnight is around the time everyone starts hitting up the bars for drinks and tapas before going to a discoteca or whatever. Sevilla was beautiful at night, but SO quiet.

So we arrive at the Hostel Catedral, it was a quaint little place tucked away in one of the winding back streets of Sevilla, and as the name suggests the inner décor was quite religiously themed, to say the least. There was crucifixions Everywhere, along with many rosaries and a large silver pop-out sculpture on a wooden backboard of The Last Supper on the wall in our room. The woman at the front desk was pretty interesting too, not to be rude or racial or anything like that but she was a Gypsy and she was letting off some pretty weird vibes. She seemed pretty quiet with big, bush dark hair..(maybe it's so big because it's full of secrets..Mean Girls ref. aha), pale skin, and dark eye make-up.

After we put our stuff into the hostel room, which was RIGHT BESIDE the registration desk area, we went out to find some food but pretty much Everything was closed, even the few restaurants that had been open on our way in were closing down for the night, it was like 1:30am..wtf? Eventually we found this place that looked like a pre-historic cave and it had some cheap food and drinks so chilled there for a couple hours, it was pretty entertaining watching the locals, there was a group of street workers that were big buff guys in bright orange vests who came in and had a good time joking around and then there was all the drinkers and smokers, one guy was trying to hard to hook up with friend with this woman, and she just wasn't interested aha. poor guy.

So Friday we did like a hardcore sight-seeing tour of Sevilla, we probably saw about 75% of all the main attractions you should see while you're there. It was a very long day of about 8 hours of walking/touring around but it was Amazing. The Catedral was an Art-History-gasm or an eye-gasm (some new terms we have invented), the Alcazar was very beautiful too, along with all the other smaller churches and awesome little plazas but my favourite place in Sevilla was definitely Plaza de España, it was like Venice from an alternate universe, it was so beautiful.

 Catedral de Sevilla

Alcazar & Alcazar Gardens

Plaza de España <3 

After a long day of touring around we all crashed for a few hour siesta back at the hostel, although when we got back there, it wasn't the gypsy woman at the desk but a young bulgarian guy who had the craziest hair, he looked like a brunette version of Johnny Bravo, no joke. around midnight we decided to go out and find a party, we were going to hang around the hostel a while longer but Johnny had left the front desk and there was now a small asian woman there who kept shushing us starting at like 11:30pm -_-' 

After a random series of events we ended up at this discoteca called Abril, it was quite a fancy place, everyone was gorgeous and dressed up, even the guys were wearing dress shirts and some even ties or jackets, and of course, the three of us were wearing jeans and some sort of tops, ahwell. It was a kool place and the music was pretty random but a lot of was good. The kinda lame thing about it though was that 85% of the people there weren't dancing or not very much anyways, me and K were kicking it north american style and jamming to the music along with a few other groups of girls and guys who were probably not Spanish either, the scene in Sevilla and in Spain is more of a cultural way to socially drink and pick people up, the guys stand around and drink or are wandering about on the prowl and the woman just stand around and maybe sway to the music looking gorgeous and waiting to be preyed upon. It was interesting experience, gotta say, Sevilla made me appreciate Granada. 

Saturday we toured around a bit more and saw the last like 25% of Sevilla we hadn't seen the day before, we came across this big mall type of thing and I saw the first Mcd's I've seen since leaving TO. It almost a little sad. around 6pm we caught the train back to Granada. All in all an awesome trip, I'm finally starting to feel like I'm actually here, being in school and going on weekend excursions, I'm finally realizing that I am here in EUROPE to LIVE. It's insane.

Oct. 4-6

First Week of Classes

So get this, originally I thought I started school on Monday Oct. 1st but as it turns out I didn't actually start until today Tuesday Oct. 2nd. Why is that you may ask? Well, no one in Granada had school yesterday because apparently it was ANOTHER holiday..yes another holiday, surprise surprise...at first I thought maybe it was a continuation of the Sunday Patron Saint holiday or maybe it was a bank holiday or maybe it was a different Granada cultural city holiday but no, we all got the day off school because it was literally a holiday to celebrate the beginning of the school year...I'm serious. BAHAHAHA! Only. In. Spain. So yeah, that's pretty much just how this place works. As was further proven to me today when I had my first classes.
The ridiculous story of my first day of classes...

As always, I had the fun of dealing with ridiculous Spain/CLM disorganization early this morning. Basically, I was suppose to have my Italian class at 10:30am-12:30pm and then my Spanish Conversational class at 12:30pm-2pm, I get to the Italian class and it turns out it's the 1A level class and I'm suppose to be in 1B class which is at 12:30pm but I had that other class at 12:30pm, so I had to go to the secretería to try and sort out all this nonsense. Originally when I had made my schedule the guy had just told me there was 3 italian classes at whatever times and put me in the one at 10:30am because it fit the best in my timetable, apparently the 3 classes are all different levels, moron. So anyways, leave that 1A italian class like 20mins in and then go to get a number for the secretería line up. My number was 82 and it was currently at 57, I knew it was going to be a long wait so I actually went grocery shopping, then brought the groceries home and had some cereal and then went back to the CLM, it was still only at number 76 when I got back there so I still ended up waiting around for like 15mins to get into the secretería, ridiculous or what? AND THEN the admin woman put me into the 12:30pm italian class but for some reason didn't see that it conflicted with my other 12:30pm spanish class, so she had to go back and fix my schedule a second time, luckily I noticed the mistake before I had left the office... So now I have only Italian on tues/thurs from 12:30pm-2:30pm and have my 3 Spanish classes mon/wednes 10:30am-12:30pm/12:30pm-2:30pm/4pm-6pm. So today all I actually had was my first italian class, tomorrow should be more organized and interesting with my actual spanish classes, I hope aha.

As a totally random little side story, I just want to say that I have noticed that just like in North America, pretty much all the convenience and dollarstores here in Granada are run by Asians. I'm not trying to make any kind of racial or stereotypical comment here, obviously since I'm Chinese, it is simply an observation. At first I was kind of weirded out, and then all I could do was laugh and realize how similar our world is sometimes. On a little more of a racial note, I found it mildly offensive and politically incorrect that the locals here call the dollarstores (or Bazars in Spanish) 'El Chino' which basically translates as 'china man'..anyways there's a weird little fact for all of you.

Oct. 2

Religious Holidays in Granada

Oh man I love this city, they have the randomest holidays and the most relaxed style of deciding when they want to open and close stores/shops/restaurants/etc here.  Sunday was a major holiday here, I think monday is still part of the holiday because there wasn't any school today for anyone so my first week of classes is going to be only 3 days ahaha. So anyways, there was a massive celebration in the city starting sometime in the afternoon, it was a celebration of the patron saint of Granada or something like that I think, it may have been a celebration of the 'Virgen' too..who might actually be the patron saint here, I have NO idea to be quite honest with you. Anyways, from what I could tell, the majority of the celebration was based around a massive procession through the streets, around mid afternoon there was a big marching band that started walking through the streets led by some guys in priests outfits carrying some kind of religious objects and people started gathering around in the streets of course, you could seriously here those loud marching band drums through the entire city, T and I went hiking up the side of mountain/hill I live on to go check out the Alhambra and we could still hear the band from all the up there, it was nuts! Then shortly after that there was an explosion of VERY loud fireworks all coming from one of the plazas somewhere in the 'centro' area, I didn't hear or see too much more after that until I was on my way home and got to the plaza where a lot of the big roads all converge and there was a MASSIVE crowd filling the streets in all directions, it was Crazy.

Apparently around then there was also a big..statue/float thing of the Virgin Mary with Jesus lying dead across her lap, sort of like La Pieta, I didn't see it but my friend A did, sounds like it was pretty extravagant, it was being carried by people too which is ridiculous! Of course after that there was lots of more marching band groups, cheering, and endless procession of church bells being rung, and other such noises coming from that part of town and then sometime after sunset there was another massive explosion of fireworks from the 'centro', I'm guessing to mark the end of the procession. They were so ridiculously loud I thought I was going to go deaf, I can't imagine how loud they must have been for people in the actual vicinity of them. Then not too long after that there was a beautiful firework show from somewhere farther away in the city, my terrace was the perfect place to watch them from and they weren't very loud either which was nice. Didn't take any pictures because I was too busy watching the fireworks and talking with my friend A but they were beautiful. Interesting day indeed.